Historical Internships (HIST 501 & HIST 502)

The Department of History at Queen’s University has created an historical internship program for academic pass/fail credit in partnership with the Queen’s University Archives. Students interested in proposing an internship must submit a five-page proposal outlining the scope of the project, itemizing work to be done, and proposing the number of learning hours to be undertaken (3.0 credits equals 120 learning hours, or approximately 10 hours per week). This proposal is expected one month before the beginning of the term in which they plan to start their project, and must be sent to the Chair of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of History. Examples include but are not limited to work in digital humanities, collection curation, archival research, and description. Full year internships (HIST 501) and single term internships (HIST 502) are available.

Before submitting their proposal, applicants must also secure a faculty sponsor (contact the Chair of Undergraduate Studies for the Department of History for assistance with this) and the sponsorship of the University’s Public Services/Private Records Archivist (contact Heather Home). Students’ proposals will be judged on their quality, the quality of the experience and its relationship to the practice of historical and archival work, and on the meaningfulness of the experience to departmental learning expectations and outcomes.

The department recognizes that marking such experiences would be impossible and, perhaps, even contrary to the spirit of experiential learning, so the course would provide only pass/fail credit to be counted as a 500-level option course for concentrators and as an elective for non-concentrators in line with Departmental practice concerning undergraduate thesis and directed readings courses. Pass/Fail credit will be awarded after the student, faculty sponsor, and archivist review the project, its outcomes, and its quality at the end of the appropriate academic term.